


Unintentionally

by misplacedmemory



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Hate it when stories are just lodged in my head, Just needed to write this out, Might edit it later on who knows, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 01:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misplacedmemory/pseuds/misplacedmemory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unintentionally, because that's the only way he'll allow it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unintentionally

            My heart, inside of his hands, is polished with the gentle turn of the universe.

            I can feel the universe hum. She (I know it’s a she, he responds promptly when I ask, and I don’t question his judgment because I just _know_ ) never repeats the same notes, but she repeats the beat. It is the steady beat of a heart that is off by one beat. Just like mine.

It changes frequencies when we travel throughout the universe. It tickles her, I believe. She can feel us through the TARDIS’ faulty brakes. They caress her gently, teasing the many folds of time and space hidden from view.

I can feel the universe sigh. She breathes in and the landscape contracts. _New parallel universes are created_ , he murmurs in my ear. _Worlds that vary, worlds that are exactly the same save for one minor detail. In a different universe you’re just a normal girl. No life of wandering. A proper life._ And he tightens up, his wiry arms freezing at the thought of what he said.

When the universe breathes in, she closes her eyes.

_Didn’t anyone warn you not to follow a madman with a box?_

*~*

When she breathes in he is tense. He’s not in synch with the universe.

A Time Lord, I imagine, focuses on what is and what can be. Fiddling with the universe like a recently found specimen. Prodding, poking, their fingers stretching the flesh until she reacts.

Sometimes, when we’re drifting through the universe, when he sets the navigation on auto-pilot to focus on other matters, I can feel the universe shudder.

 _Rassilon made us, the Gallifreyans, into Time Lords. A specific few, mind you,_ he murmurs. When he’s drunk on chemicals (do Time Lords need endorphins?) running through his vascular system, he’ll tell me snippets of his people’s past.

_He was the survivor. Omega was trapped, forver, in a different dimension. Went mad._

His voice drops as he’s more and more intoxicated.

 _There were days…_ he’s whispering now. Ragged. Longing. _Days when we could raise empires from infancy…_ He gains gusto. His hands roam all over, but he can’t find what he’s looking for. He never can when he revisits the past. For now he contents himself with what is in next to him, me, and murmurs in a hungry, pleading voice— _Days when we forged stars to do our biding, tore them apart because we_ could. _Days, oh so many days, when we bled parasite gods out, reducing them to nothing._

Times like these I do what the universe does: breathe in, and close my eyes.

*~*

Masters of the Universe are/were Time Lords. In the sense of human primitiveness they are/were. They have/had manipulated the landscape to suit their needs. They are/were her captors, and the Universe was the rare animal behind the glass.

Once upon a time my people would have called the Time Lords colonialist.

Time Lords focus/ed on Time and Space, and very little else. In the familiar ragged whispers I form my own version of the Time Lords and their society:

I believe all Time Lords are/were Rassilon incarnate. They all have/had the clinical disposition to treat all that they lust/ed after with smug pride.

*~*

He tries to make me see that he is not like them. Not like the stagnant bureaucracy that runs/ran rampant with his people. He tries to show me places far beyond the reaches of what I and many others of my time period could only dream of. These places come off as exotic for him. Not personally. No. But he shows them to me with the hope of exciting me. Somehow this excitement will let me see he really is different.

Everywhere we go he’s always needed. He must always have a choice thrust upon him. He chooses the lesser of two evils, because that’s what he always does.

He is special. At least, that’s what he wants to convey. Like a teenage boy he’s trying to prove he’s unique. He likes to show off his open-mindedness. Likes to prove to anyone with fully functioning eyes how clever he is.

He’s livid. Bitter with choices, haggard with numbness. He can see into the future and knows what will happen. But he cannot see the infinite possibilities of every decision/action/person/world. This is what he is suffering for. To wield the power of the Universe.

When I open my eyes I see a face contorted with pleasure.

He puts the Earth’s weight on his shoulders. He thinks he’ll climb a mountain when it’s pressing down against his chest.

His eyes, I notice when I focus on them, are glassy.

He tells me the story of his people. He tells me the grand tale of stagnant blood permeating the earth, and only he could end it. If I confronted him, he’d deny he was destined for the burden.

He _survived_. That was the one thing that was definitely not pleasant.

*~*

When the universe exhales the parallel universes she creates are cut off.

He explains, in post-coital bliss, when his defenses are down, the parallel universes are fed by all the infinite possibilities the universe could have been. They are multiverses that are essentially the same history but with different variables. _One of these universes has Winston Churchill as England’s first President after the Monarchy was destroyed in The Blitz._

In the far reaches of his past I know he’s encountered parallel worlds. Minor details that float in murky waters when I enter his mind. He doesn’t know I do this to him. Lurk in his mind to see what he remembers. Every regeneration leads to a new man, but the core will remain roughly intact.

The first time I lurked I saw a woman smiling mischievously. No, not him. I don’t believe he identifies as such. (But stranger things have happened, as I learned later when I saw a vision of multi-colored vomit walking and talking.) In the back of his mind she lurks like I but does not make a sound. She merely watches, eyes focus sharply at whatever passes by. She turns around (I don’t believe she took notice of me), and her mass of hair springs into life. She starts to fade away, and when she’s completely gone she reappears like a resistant strain of bacteria.

She’s an echo, as he would vaguely explain.

When he sleeps and I cannot sleep I re-enter his head. I do not see the woman when he sleeps; she’s reserved for when I close my eyes and breathe in. I see fire inside of him. Fields of fire creating a barrier between a large citadel and the world unknown. Snippets of laughter, boyish pranks, and the occasional choking sob. A childhood.

Behind each door there are adventures of former companions. I have seen Adric’s death a thousand times and I see how he is propelled out of the ship, body limp when it hits the closest object—a cliff. Sarah Jane’s smiles bleed through the thin film of memories to create a mess. She’s only smiles in his head. I see differently. I see Jamie and Victoria and Dodo and they all vanish in the blink of an eye. I see them when I open my eyes: smiling, bright-eyed. Children.

*~*

I’m swallowed by the lives of different companions. Those that have lived within the corridors of the TARDIS; I am breathing the recirculated air they once breathed many years ago.

Each breath is as if they are invading my body. Taking on a host to live vicariously through me. One more trip with their beloved Doctor.

*~*

I see things he can’t.

The universe lets me discover all that is, all that was, and all that will be.

*~*

When I’m trapped in a pocket universe he does more harm than good.

He killed the sentient being that controlled the universe.

Although I told him I was fine, I wasn’t.

When the being died I felt a strange pang in my chest cavity. Cold water seemed to be poured into the base of my head and run through me. Thinning the composition of myself. I was reduced. Deprived.

I was a limb that was gangrenous.

The universe tried to cut me off. She felt I was too poisonous.

When we reentered the universe—the proper universe—the TARDIS had trouble managing her controls. The Universe wanted me out.

No longer welcome, a hiss seeped into my thoughts. No longer welcome.

I had killed one of her creations. He says the Universe isn’t aware she creates other universes, but he’s wrong. She births so many and when she exhales they aren’t completely cut off. They’re strong enough to grow on their own.

It takes me a long time to feel her accept me again.

Even then, I’m still just a bad limb.

*~*

This wasn’t the Universe’s first encounter with poisonous limbs.

A long time before my run as a companion a blonde shop girl stared into the Heart of the TARDIS.

The Universe didn’t cut her off immediately. Rather, she was setting things up in a sinister matter. Let him fall in love with her completely. And then she sawed her off.

I’ve seen this scene, over and over after the incident, as a sort of warning: She’s slipping away, crying out. He can’t do anything about it. Does he know? Has he always known? Her voice is warped, slow and sped up, but I can always hear her clearly.

It drives me _mad_ hearing her cry.

*~*

Limbs can be accidentally hacked off.

The Most Important Woman in The Universe knows that.

*~*

Running with him is like flying away.

In the midst of saving my neck I stop for a fraction of a second. The Doctor’s hand is frozen but I can still feel its warmth. The TARDIS is humming softly and the Universe is singing a low tune. The Doctor can never hear these tunes. Time Lords block all interference out.

We saved Marco Polo from a great She-Wolf and now we are running from the Mongolian tribe that remembers a strange man who once insulted their great leader. The Doctor’s got a wild smile on his face that stretches his features to resemble a silly putty.

I was almost taken as a captive. He swaggered in with a cocky attitude and charm, armed only with that ridiculous metal cylinder he calls a screwdriver. They almost chopped my head off when he whipped it out.

He ran and took my wrist and I went flying after him as he sped off. I never feel my feet touch the ground. He’s keeping me from floating off but he doesn’t realize that. With all that weight he’s carrying, the poor boy, he’s a twig of lead. I’m looking down and I’m flying a head above him. The Universe’s voice deepens and a howl emerges from another world. I’m swallowed by the howls. His grip forces me to wince and gasp in pain, but he applies even more pressure.

Maybe he realized far before I did.

*~*

I didn’t close my eyes when it happened.

I couldn’t bear to shut him out.

Could Time Lords experience pain, through contact, like the silly humanoid aliens from that old TV series?

If they could, then he felt what I have always felt when I was near him: terror.

*~*

In the TARDIS Matrix I am kept away in a neat file, next to a fiery girl with the Universe whispering in her ear. My likeness is kept as a patchwork—I wear a blue cardigan, I wear nothing; I’m laughing, I’m sobbing. Sobbing for what? For a lost figure? Perhaps. Things were always painful back then. The TARDIS does her best to recreate my different moods and clothes but it’s never close to who I am. Once was.

Sometimes I get a visit, but these are few and far in between. I wonder if I exist within his mind. I wonder if he keeps me silent; ignores the pitch of my voice like he ignores the Universe’s to keep himself from going mad. The Universe conspires to bring me back—she knows I long to return to the plane of existence—but I cannot allow her. All that is gone should never come back. Even if I did, I wouldn’t be the same. I’d poison the Universe; make her die a slow and painful death, taking Time and Reality along with her. The Doctor would have to throw me out of existence if it meant saving her.

We two know who would be saved. It’s not even a matter to question.

The Doctor never visits for more than two minutes at a time. I see him in my life—a teacher’s aide, a man shopping for chocolate, a passerby who’s watching me go to work—and he never says hello. It’s better that way. Or worse. It depends on ethics. I’m an echo in his mind and I am always haunting him.

Unintentionally, but that’s the only way The Doctor will have it.


End file.
